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THE 



AMERICAN REPUBLIC 



AN ADDRESS 



DELIVERED AT PARKERSBURG, W. Va., 



July 4TH, 1867. 



Bv M. C. C. CHURCH. 



PUBLISHED BY REQUEST. 




PARKERSBURG, W. Va. 

1867. 



1 Z^(^ 



University Pkkss : W'kh ii, Migelow, & Co., 

C\M15KIU(_,li. 



ADDRESS 



Ladies and Gentlemen : — 

I AM to speak to you to-day of the American 
Republic. 
Since the advent of the Saviour of manlcind, there 
has been a new spirit introduced into the life of 
humanity. Before that event, man, divorced from his 
God and from heaven, had exhausted the whole round 
of speculation in the vain attempt to find a resting- 
place for the soul. The superstitious worship of 
Nature, in all her manifold forms and features, had 
taken the place of the worship of the true God. 
The government of force and of fraud held all men 
in vassalage. The baser appetites dominated the 
higher or spiritual nature ; and, when Christ came, 
humanity had reached the lowest point of the mere 
natural man. Our common nature was almost ex- 
hausted of the Divine life, and God alone saved it 
from extinction. From Christ went forth a new re- 
generating influence, — an influence supplied by the 
mighty power of his own life. From Him, — from 
this centre-point, — from this tap-root, — the tree of 
human salvation and progress commenced to grow. 
His blood supplied the sap of the root, trunk, and 
branches of this great tree. The leaven of his life 
has worked and worked until the moving mass of 



human nature is being pervaded by his Divine 
breath, and the Truth is upbuilding the fabric of 
our fallen humanity into His own glorious image. 
As It takes form in external life, governments, no 
less than individuals, are reduced to its Divine order 
of Justice, Liberty, and Law. The spirit of that lite 
is working everywhere ; no power can resist it, no 
hand can stay it, until its victories are complete, and 
all men acknowledge the power of its authority. 

Now, what was this life ? What was this force ? 
What was the influence that went forth from this Di- 
vine personality.^ Lidependent of the scholasticism 
which hangs over this entire subject, the life of Christ 
was Divinely and supremely human. It was redolent 
with all human sympathy ; it was the incarnation of 
all human dignity; the sweetness of all huiTian mod- 
esty; the grandeur of all human courage; the One 
who held his place at the centre of all our life; the 
Bearer of its woes, the Friend of the friendless, the 
Comforter of the comfortless, — the power of God to 
the salvation of man. 

Commencing His ministry among the proudest, the 
most debased, the most bigoted people that ever lived, 
he gave a daily example of heroism, of modesty, and of 
love, which has never been surpassed. In three years 
he gathered around his person a few followers to whom 
he committed the great truths of his new kingdom, — 
a kingdom of righteousness and of peace. The two 
fundamental truths which he lived, and which he 
taught by word and by example, and the two funda- 
mental truths which he committed to his followers, 
were, the Universal Brotherhood of Man, and the Universal 
Fatherhood of God ; himself being the exemplar of both. 



Before Christ, no people, no nation, had heard so 
comprehensive a doctrine and so universal a sympa- 
thy. Mine and thine, — my family, m nation, my 
selfish aggrandizement, with their withering and blight- 
ing influences, — had usurped the place of this Divine 
charity. No unity anywhere, — no broad brotherhood 
of feeling swelling from the base to the summit of 
humanity's temple. So intensified had the feeling of 
caste become, so powerful had the intense feeling of 
selfishness become, that it was almost impossible for 
the disciples of the Lord to understand his meaning 
until they had been endued with wisdom from on 
high. Born Jews, they had been taught that they had 
Moses and the Prophets; that they were a peculiar 
people, — the very conservators of the Divine presence 
upon earth ; the chosen of God, anci therefore a little 
better than their Gentile neighbors. The spirit of ex- 
clusiveness and caste was born into their very marrow 
and blood. They could not think that God had any 
care over the outside world ; or that the Messiah of 
their imaginations could eat with publicans and sin- 
ners, and go about doing good, even on the Jewish 
Sabbath day. Christ, no doubt, seemed to the de- 
vout Jews of his day as a great innovator; a blas- 
phemer; a Sabbath-breaker ; an iconoclast. To their 
exclusive culture, he was the destroyer of the Law 
which they held sacred : he was a leveller, who came 
to teach that all men were brethren, — that all men had 
a common Father. He delighted to associate with 
those whom society cast out of its virtuous bosom 
as pariahs and sinners. He awoke in degraded wo- 
manhood longings after a higher and purer life, and 
forgave the sins which crushed the soul. He quick- 



ened the conscience of hard-hearted avarice, and made 
it disgorge its unrighteous treasure. He inspired all 
who came into his presence with a sense of the dig- 
nity which is veiled under all human nature. He pro- 
claimed the great fact of the immortality of the soul, 
and that it was more priceless and precious than rubies, 
and more to be esteemed than his own crown, which he 
willincrly laid aside to become the servant of servants. 

Jesus Christ was, and is, the Divine Man. In him 
we behold the possibilities of human nature, when he is 
enthroned in the conscience, in the will, and in the un- 
derstanding of the race. As he stooci alone in Judaea, 
proclaiming the divinity of his mission, he was the 
prophecy of a redeemed humanity, as it shall finally 
stand when he completes his work of restoration. He 
was the " beginning of the creation of God." We see 
in him, as he stood in that darkest period of the 
world's history, the Fypal Man ot the new race, — its 
founder, father, and friend. From and in him were 
the vast future; and, as the silent influences of that life 
passeci into the ages, we have the fruition of the Chris- 
-■tian Church, T/ie New Christian Age. The splendor of 
that life now shines into all hearts, awaking the echoes 
of a long-lost, but true and returning faith, — the 
Brotherhood of Man, and the Fatherhood of God. As 
he comes, through his Spirit, he meets the same diffi- 
culties, he finds the same foes. He wars against the 
same spirit of caste which is born of Phariseeism and 
Sadduceeism,* — the spirit which enslaves the body no 
less than the mind ; the spirit which believes that 
God's image is shared by a few; the spirit which be- 
lieves that one class was made to serve, and an- 
other class was made to rule. He finds bloated in- 



7 

diligence, hardened crime, cruel hate, lustful pride, and 
infernal tyranny and greedy avarice everywhere warring 
against his spirit of lowly meekness, sweet and tender 
charity, holy and divine manhood, and sacred inno- 
cence. He is crucified now, as of olci, in the hearts of 
his professed children, and between the two thieves 
represented in a corrupt Church and in a corrupt 
State. 

Our prevalent Christianity, friends, is too often 
the mere echo of an effete and worn-out Judaism. 
We are slaves to law and custom, and the conven- 
tionalities of human life. We have not the free- 
born spontaneity of the spirit which was manifested 
through the Christ. We are puling babes instead of 
men inspired by the power of all true manhood. 
We crucify the Lord by our unholy distinctions and 
sectarian differences. Our righteousness is the right- 
eousness of the Pharisee ; our goodness is measured 
by a form ; our charitv, by so much per cent. It 
is our privilege, inspired by Christ's spirit, to be 
like him; to live a life which he lived, — a life of 
true nobleness, a life of righteousness and of truth, 
a life all aglow with human sympathy and love, 
a life free from canting hypocrisy, a life sealing 
its devotion to truth by martyrdom, a life fed from 
above by the influences ot heaven, a life of spotless 
innocence and divine spontaneity, a life in com- 
mon with our fellow-men, yet as pure and true as 
an angel's. Such a life was Christ's. -Such is the 
life he is now seeking to impart to all his children. 

The true characteristics of the Christianity which 
Christ taught, is an humble acknowledgment in 
spirit of our constant dependence upon God ; that 



in ourselves we hav^e no life ; that we have no 
power to originate lite ; that all is from God, who is 
the only life. The reason why spiritual pride, or 
Phariseeism, is so hateful to God is, it robs him 
of his glory, and shuts out the only life that can 
produce true and righteous fruits. Phariseeism is 
at the base of all our class distinctions. It breeds 
tyranny and hypocrisy ; it destroys all sympathy 
with our kind; it robs the mind of true peace; it 
dries up the affections, and makes man a demon in 
soul and a brute in body. Christ, tor this reason, 
proclaims all equal before God ; that is to sav, that 
all, by virtue of a common origin in himself, have 
a common nature ; by virtue of the solidarity of 
humanity we inherit into the common woe. All 
may be born into the glorious image of God, and 
all are born into the image of the fallen man. "Of 
one blood are all nations of the earth," ami hence 
there are no grounds of distinction anvwhere. We 
are all pensioners upon the bounty of Heaven, — all 
are, or may be, partakers of the Divine life. None 
are excluded from the sympathy of God, and none 
should be exempt tVom the care of man. 

In this Address my object has been to show you 

the Typdl Man, the head of the New Humanity, 

the Divine Man, the Lord Jesus Christ, — his 
spirit, his teaching, his purposes, — so that we as in- 
dividuals and as a community may, by our lives, 
sow the seeds which will bring forth the same fruit; 
that we may be co-operators with him in transform- 
ing, regenerating, and upbuilding the great American 
Republic. The basis of Christ's teaching and life 



was the equality of all men before God. Such should 
be the basis, such must be the basis, upon which 
our whole national superstructure is to be reared. 

On the Fourth of July, 1776, this New Gospel, 
or rather Old Gospel, was strongly and firmly enun- 
ciated by the founders of the American Republic. 
They affirmed that all men are created equal, that 
they are endowed by their Creator with certain in- 
alienable rights, which government cannot take away 
nor society disown. They reasserted in the Declara- 
tion of Independence the funciamental principles of 
Christianity. That which was asserted by one man 
— the Divine Man — eighteen centuries before, was 
again proclaimed by a congress of men, inspired by 
his spirit, as the corner-stone of the New American 
Republic. But, like His own Church, the simplicity 
of this faith was soon obscured. Our fathers and 
their ciescendants lost sight of the true fiith. The 
enemy entered in the night of self-security, and 
sowed the seeds of slavery and disunion in our 
national soil, and a dissolved Union is almost the 
consequence. The destruction of one million of 
lives, and the expenditure of three thousand millions 
of dollars, is the result. The estrangement of fathers 
and mothers, brothers and sisters, friends and neigh- 
bors, is the horrid picture we behold. God's justice 
has triumphed, and our own defeat is secured. With 
the wild waste before us, with the savage brutality 
of war still unspent, with the passions of bad men's 
hearts still rioting in victory or defeat, let us re- 
turn to the early taith of the founders of the 
Republic. And as we again build the national 
foundation upon the broad and enduring granite 



lO 



of Justice, Truth, and Equality, the new Temple 
of Liberty will shine in all its original splendor. 
It will rise a pyramid of flame to light the nations 
on to the realization of the New and Universal 
Republic, whose maker and builder is God ; and 
whose overarching dome will shelter the nations. 

The whole movement of the age tends to the 
Universal. Universal liberty, universal suffrage, 
universal education, are the terms by which this 
movement expresses itself. Like the alpine torrent, 
it sweeps everything before it. It is the Divine 
force which is seeking to bring oiu* aims and pur- 
poses to something beyond the mere selfish aims and 
purposes of human lite. God is endeavoring to make 
us feel the warm, palpitating love ot his own heart, 
which is not confined to one person or a few per- 
sons, but to the entire human race; for the race only 
can express the boundlessness of His love. The 
circling waves of our own life, or rather the Divine 
life, goes forth from Itself in us as a centre-point to 
brotherly love, from brotherly love to universal love, 
which is a love for the whole human race, and the love 
which makes us God-like and universal in our aims. 
If we stop short of this love, we cannot fully refiect 
the Divine image. 

In the realization of the Universal, where error and 
evil have so long stifled the ]icnt-up heart of man, 
many irregularities, much fanaticism and infidelity, 
are woven into our devout aspirations. But God is 
here as everywhere ; and he interposes a conservative 
law by which the good is conserved and the evil is 
permitted to destroy itself. Hence, we always find 
that, after a i2;reat revolution, such as we have been 



1 1 



passing through, a reaction takes place which care- 
fully separates the good from the evil, the truth from 
the falsehood, and thus nothing truly noble and valu- 
able is lost to humanity. Take, for instance, the 
principle of universal suffrage. There is nothing 
plainer than that universal suffrage is to be the law 
of this land. But any one who loves his country must 
shudder at the thought that this privilege is to be 
the gift to all, irrespective of qualification or fitness. 
When the universality of this principle is established, 
its abuses will bring us to the more true position of 
impartial, qualified suffrage. The abuse of a principle 
always brings its correction by reaction ; and you may 
look for this reaction when the present storm passes 
over. The lightning of universal principles is necessary 
to clear our moral and political sky. But when the 
political sky is cleared, this and all other questions 
will adjust themselves to a true standard. It is this 
philosophy, or the recognition of a Divine Providence 
ruling in human affairs, which gives to the Christian 
steadiness of aim and faith. He knows that there is 
a hand guiding the storm, which will bring all things 
right if he does his duty. 

To attain to a recognition of the Universal in our 
own experience and faith, we must recognize the ordi- 
nary allotments of human life. We must start from 
ourselves, or rather from the Divine in ourselves. To 
realize that all life is a Sacrament, the Lord has giv- 
en us one holy Sacrament that this realization may be 
made personal. To realize that all days are sacred, 
he gives us one day in seven by which this fact may be 
perpetuated. That we may feel the sweetness of filial 
and parental love, he gives us the unity of the family 



12 



relation. To feel the genuineness of fraternal love, he 
gives us the Church, the Community, and the State in 
which we live, and to which we owe our duties as 
members and as citizens, x^nd, above all, to give us 
an object to worship, God gives himself in Jesus 
Christ, that we may have his personal image before 
the mind, and that our worship may be potentialized, 
and made personal and sacred. So the whole round 
of human experience runs. We attain the universal in 
the particular. 

When we go back and examine the beginnings of 
our national life, we see God's providence clearly man- 
ifest, infusing and transfusing all the best elements 
of the Old World's culture. The Puritan brought us 
English law, order, and industry, and love of inde- 
pendence and personal liberty. He grew where no 
other could grow, — on the rugged soil of New England. 
The Hollander, with his commerce, has made New 
York the centre of the financial and trading world. 
On the shores of Maryland was cjuickly cemented 
the mercurial temperament of the Celt; Delaware, 
and afterwards North Carolina, the noble and hardy 
Swiss; South Carolina, the fiery and intellectual Hu- 
guenot; and Florida, the Spaniard, the soul of chivalry. 
Thus every element of the Old World commenced its 
almost simultaneous movement upon the American 
continent. All these elements have gone into our 
national life, making us a nation and people different 
from all other nations and from all other peoples. The 
Anglo-Saxon element, so called, is the dominant ele- 
ment, because the F-nghsh nation, more than anv other 
nation, has given to the world liberty and law; and it 
would seem that God intended that Entxlish law and 



political precedents should, for a time, rule and nurse 
our infant life. Although we gained our independence 
as Colonies from the mother country, we have not yet 
tully gained our National independence. The late war 
has pretty well weaned us — North and South — from 
the old mother's influence. We are rapidly emerg- 
ing from a state of pupilage to a state of matured 
manhood. When this is fully attained, the American 
Republic will be representative, — representative of 
American ideas, American impulses, and true Amer- 
ican independence. When this is accomplished, this 
day will be hallowed as it should be. 

In addition to the providential fact here alluded to, 
there is another equally strange and worthy of atten- 
tion. Whilst the various germs and roots of our na- 
tional existence were gathered from the best elements 
forming the European civilization, and planted on the 
Atlantic seaboard, two principles were developed as 
the growth of the Colonies went forward. These prin- 
ciples were and are to-day represented by Massachusetts 
and South Carolina. One was in constant effort to 
extend the principle of unity ; the other as constantly 
asserting the principle of State sovereignty, or indepen- 
dence. These two principles, now fully developed 
and known as North and South, have been growing 
and warring since the first Colonies were planted ; and 
the conflict which has, at various times, arisen by the 
one-sided- action of one or the other, has only been de- 
cided by the recent conflict of arms. The Union and 
States' Rights were the two terms which expressed this 
conflict. A perversion of one — the Union — results 
in consolidation and tyranny ; the perversion of the 
other — States' Rights — brings anarchy, rebellion, se- 



14 

cession, dissolution. Both principles are right anci ne- 
cessary to the equilibrium of our form of government, 
when properly adjusted and working in harmony. 
South Carolina is right, and so is Massachusetts, when 
each understands the function that each is to perform 
in the life of the Republic. One preserves us as a na- 
tion ; the other preserves the purity of local self-gov- 
ernment. Destroy either, and we have despotism on 
the one hand, and anarchy on the other. Divorce 
them, and we have hatred anci hell ; unite them, and 
we have the chaste bridals of the skies in the love of 
heaven. This union cannot be fully consummated, 
this marriaQ;e cannot be tully pronounced, until the 
fundamental principles ot Christianity are recognized, 
North and South, — the principles of justice and 
liberty and equality for all in rights, privileges, and 
duties. When we say equality, we do not mean, nor 
does Christianity mean, nor did the fathers of the re- 
public mean, equality of social relation, equality of 
physical and intellectual endowments, nor ecjuality of 
moral attainments, but equality before God, equality 
before the law, — equality in rights, privileges, and im- 
munities in a Christian commonwealth; that all may 
be free to do right, but none free to do wrong : free to 
open up the vast possibilities of the soul heavenward ; 
free to enjoy unlimited communion with God, in nature, 
in society, and in and through the soul, where his more 
immediate presence is revealed to each individual heart 
and mind. To this end are governments formed; to 
this end is the Church ordained ; to this end is the 
boundless domain of nature opened up throu(i;h in- 
dustry, science, art, commerce, trade, and all that per- 
tains to the physical and aesthetic nature of man. 



15 

Whilst Christianity asserts the solidarity and equal- 
ity of humanity, by reason of a common origin in 
God, it also asserts the counterpart of this half truth, 
the individuality and inequality of each human soul. 
That is to say, that whilst the One Life of God is the 
base of humanity as a whole, the manifestation of that 
life, through individual souls, reveals unequal rela- 
tions between all, from the highest to the lowest. 
Humanity is a Grand Man, and each individual forms 
a part of the whole. Some belong to the head, some 
to the arms, some to the breast and loins, some to the 
limbs, and some to the feet. It is a hierarchy which, 
when acting perfectly, reveals the lineaments of the 
Divine Man, whose One Life pervades the whole. 
Now these two principles. Equality and Inequality (a 
paradox to the superficial thinker), must find their full 
and perfect embodiment in our National Life, before 
this Nation can be what God designs it to be. In the 
reconciliation of these two elements, — which are at 
present imperfectly represented by the terms North 
and South, — we shall have the solution of the prob- 
lem which now disturbs the devout and patriotic 
Christian. When these two terms are brought into 
dialectic Unity, we shall find that the American State 
is not a vast Syncretism, but it is perfect in all its 
parts, and that One Life pervades the whole in 
Diversity. To rise to the conception of this Unity 
in Diversity is the office of Statesmanship and of true 
Seership. 

When we analyze the formation ot our national ex- 
istence, we find that the head of the vast stream of 
civilization which meanders down through the ages, 
and finds its outlet here, is traced back to the old 



i6 



GrcTCO-Roman Republic and Empire. Rome con- 
quered but could not destroy Grecian liberty and her 
love of the Beautiful ; but, entering her rough and 
huo;e organism of Law, she moulded Roman thought, 
and in the union of the two Roman civilization was 
made more enduring; and as the monuments of her 
greatness descend to us, modern civilization and liter- 
ature are enriched, and the glory of the past is revealed 
to us in the Old World in the power and growth of 
England and France, and here and now more safely 
established in the Great Western Republic. The 
American Union is an epitome of the Grarco-Roman 
Republic, with the Christian spirit operating where 
the old heathenism held sway. The North and the 
South represent the two ideas which are destined to 
work on until the Divine ideal is attained in liberty 
and law, in truth and beauty. When this ideal is re- 
alized, our mistaken coimtrymen will see that there is 
no conquering North nor humiliated South; but both, 
treed from the barbarism which inheres in their pres- 
ent inharmonious relations, will be united in indisso- 
luble wedlock, — forever fixed in the immutable will of 
Him who is fashioning both, by a mysterious process, 
into his own image of justice, beauty, and liberty. But 
before that day comes both sections will have to be 
sifted and shaken by the Hand which is separating the 
wheat from the chaff, and which is leading us on un- 
til the entire American continent shall own the sway of 
Heaven's King, — the Lord. 

A further analysis of the American Republic shows 
us that it is an organism, — a body complex in its 
character, and not an organization, a confederation, 
or a league of States. 1 know that, to a superficial 



17 

glance, the opposite see^jjs the fact. And here is where 
the South has always had the advantage in the argu- 
ment. We cannot get a full statement of the facts 
of the growth of the American States until they are 
fully evolved ; and the apparent facts of our experi- 
ence, prior to the war, had all been, until subjected 
to a deeper analysis, on the side of the South. All 
our statesmen, all our great jurists, all our best 
writers, had admitted that the States, in the beginnincr, 
as Colonies, were "sovereign and independent," — 
were autonomous, — were self-existent entities. Mr. 
Webster made this admission in his celebrated debate 
with Mr. Hayne and Mr. Calhoun ; Chancellor Kent 
and Justice Chase made the same admission. Presi- 
dent Jackson, in his brave and heroic Nullification 
Proclamation, admitted the prior separate sovereignty 
and independence of the Colonies, and from them the 
States which made up the original American Union. 
Any one who is acquainted with the political discus- 
sions which have periodically arisen in our history, 
knows that all our principal men regarded the Colo- 
nies, and after them the States, as independent, and as 
having the attributes of sovereignty, separately consid- 
ered. Those who have defended our nationality, from 
Webster to Sumner, have admitted that it was only 
after they surrendered this sovereignty, in the forma- 
tion of the Union, that we became a Nation, — one 
political people. Calhoun, in his work on Govern- 
ment, which was and is the text-book of all South- 
ern secessionists, maintained, and, from his stand- 
point, justly, we think, that, if it be a fact that the 
original American Colonies, and after them the States 
which formed the American Union, were each sover- 



i8 



eign and independent, then this Union is nothing 
but a league, a compact, a confederacy, with its sover- 
eignty vesting in the people of the several States separ- 
ately considered ; and hence it follows further, and 
with perfect consistency, that, if the States were sov- 
ereign, exercising all the attributes ot sovereignty 
through their political peoples, the xA.merican Union is 
a creature of the States, — an agent to carry out the 
purposes and will ot the copartnership of States. 
To carry the argument further, as is claimed by the 
secessionist, when the agent transcends his powers, 
goes contrarv to his written instructions (the Consti- 
tution), the compact is broken, — the partnership is 
dissolved. This was precisely the reasoning ot the 
Southern leaders, and the basis of their, to them, 
consistent action. Here is the ground tor a charita- 
ble interpretation of the motives and actions of many 
who went into the Rebellion. They were honest; 
they were willing to lav down their lives for a prin- 
ciple ; and like true men many ot them were martyrs 
to their faith. We would not excuse, we cannot 
find words to utter our condemnation of the spirit 
which actuated the worthless vagabonds, the ambitious 
scoundrels, the foul and false-hearted traffickers in 
human flesh and blood, who seduced the honest, the 
cultured, the high-toned men and women in the 
South to take part in their iiitcrnal conspiracy against 
the rights, the liberties, and the sacred privileges of 
a portion of God's children, and ot our brethren in 
God's spirit. God and history will consign these to 
their merited intamy ; if nor in this world, certainly 
in the next. A righteous retribution will eliminate 
the true from the false; and as this elimination 



goes forward, we will see who are the true men 
and women of the South, — those who followed prin- 
ciple rather than policy, those who loved truth 
rather than practise a lie; and, although mistaken 
in what that principle, in all its relations, involved, 
a righteous God will do these justice: they will be 
preserved as the true seed from which a true recon- 
struction will proceed hereafter. 

But to return. We have said, that, on a further 
analysis of the American Republic, it will be found 
that ours is not an organization, a league, a confed- 
eracy, but an organism^ a bodv^ filled with a living 
spirit, whose outgoings are justice, righteousness, and 
liberty. Let us see if we can make good this state- 
ment, and at the same time preserve the truth underly- 
ing the great and true and necessary doctrine of State 
Rights. We have already hinted in part how this is 
to be done, by showing the two principles which lie 
at the base of the American State. We now proceed 
to show how the American Union was formed, and 
how the Divine Providence has preserved the two 
principles, Union and State Rights^ Nationality and 
Federation, as necessary factors of the one Union, — 
reflecting: the duality and trinity of the source of all 
beneficent proceedings. 

We find that the North American Colonies, not- 
withstanding their apparent diversity of origin, in the 
course of time became integral parts of the dominant 
influence which emanated from the British Empire. 
From charters derived from the mother country, guar- 
anteeing all the rights, privileges, and liberties of Eng- 
lishmen under the English Constitution, each Colony 
owed allegiance to the sovereignty represented in the 



20 



crown and Parliament of Great Britain. To that gov- 
ernment EACH Colony, /or itself^ held this relation. This 
continued up to the Declaration of Independence. 
Here is where the primal rights of the States got lodge- 
ment ; and it was seeing this tact that made Mr, Cal- 
houn, in his work on Government, and in his debate 
with Mr. Webster, contend for the prior rights ot the 
States to that of the rights of the General Government; 
to the autonomy of the States derived from the Colo- 
nies, and these again derived trom the British crown. 
The rights and autonomv thus acquired were indefeasi- 
ble, prior, and inalienable, and could not, without the 
consent of the people ot the States, separatelv, be 
abrogated or taken awav ; tor sovereign powers inhere 
in the State for all time, unless destroyed bv its own 
act or surrendered to another power. 

Whilst it is true that the States got their rights from 
the mother countrv through the rights continued trom 
the Colonies, it is also true that, when the American 
Colonies (the United Colonies) threw off their allegiance 
from the crown ot (ireat Britain, they gave this 
allegiance to another Sovereign, to wit : The Political 
People of the Umti-d Sta-i-es, or the States united. 
Let us see how this was done. In all the movements 
of the Colonies, without sacrificing their autonomy, 
they moved as one people, first beginning with the 
union of the New England Colonies, and this union 
widening and extending until an iron framework was 
formed, which displayed, when the tirst issue came, a 
united form and front to the common enemv. The 
first Congress ot these Colonies was under and bv the 
aurhv)ritv of the people of the ''''United Colonies'^ when 
afterwards thev severed their relations from the parent 



21 



source, and transferred their allegiance to the people of 
the " United States," they did it as ''''united States,'' and 
not as "sovereign and independent" States. This 
appellation was only assumed when the Confederation 
— that rope of sand — was formed, which, as all know, 
did not reflect the Divine movement, and which, as 
a consequence, did not last but ten years. When the 
present Constitution of the United States was or- 
dained, it was done by the People of the United States, in 
their political organization as the people of the States 
united. Thus we see that, whilst the principle of 
Federation, of State Rights, — not State Sovereignty, — 
was being evolved, there was running with it, in fact 
was the other half of this, the true idea, — that of Union, 
that of Nationality, having its origin in New Eng- 
land. The other principle. State Rights, had its true 
expression in the Southern States, especially in South 
Carolina, When a philosophical history of the late 
war is written, it will be found that a failure to make 
this discrimination was, in a great degree, the cause of 
the war. It is true that slavery as a collateral issue 
entered into it, but it is not true that slavery was the 
main cause of the war. Slavery precipitated it, slav- 
ery was the occasion of its coming out from its unseen 
depths. Had the South been true to the institution of 
slavery, had the Southern people, instead of making 
the Southern slave a hewer of wooci and drawer of 
water, a chattel, a pensioner upon their unforced 
bounty, by a humane and just discipline, by, schools, 
churches, and all the recognized appliances ot Christian 
civilization, opened the way for the slave's future eman- 
cipation, slavery would have proved a blessing, both to 
the master and to the slave. But this was not done; 



on the contrary, the slave system was decreed eternal, 
the African declared an inferior race, and a brutal, 
selfish, and tyrannical system was being forged to fetter 
his God-given spirit forever. Then that " irrepres- 
sible conflict" which had ever existed between the 
North and South came forth to the surface, and the 
thunderbolts of God shivered into atoms the twin 
blasphemies, Slavery and the Southern Confederacy. 
Both went down to eternal night; but the true prin- 
ciple of State Rights, which God planted in the begin- 
ning of the Republic, has survived. 

In view of the fact that our national legislature is 
assuming the powers of sovereignty, is taking the form 
of the legislature of the English government, vyhich is 
entirely subversive of the true American idea of sover- 
eignty, it is necessary that we should have a true con- 
ception of where sovereignty resides in the American 
Republic. We have previously said that the Colonies, 
when they severed their relations with the British em- 
pire, transferred their allegiance as ouc people, although 
organized into separate political communities, to an- 
other sovereign, namely, T/ie Political People of the 
United States. Sovereignty vests in the people of the 
States united, and not in the people of the States dis- 
united or separately. A State or Territory out of 
this Union has none of the attributes of sovereignty; 
has none ot the rights of States in the Union, or as 
one of the United States. This view reconciles the 
whole conflict between the advocates of a Consolidated 
Nationality and the advocates of a Federal Republic 
with the States separately sovereign. It reconciles the 
conflict between Northern and Southern ideas on this 
subject. It forms the common ground upon which all 



23 

can stand, both North and South, and brings, like 
Christianity, the reconciliation which all at heart seek, 
but which all do not know so well how to attain. It 
forever settles the question between the conflicting 
parties, North and South. It shows that ours is not 
exclusively a Nationality, nor exclusively a Federal Re- 
public, but a combination of both. There is no 
Union without the States, nor are there any States 
without the Union. Sovereignty, therefore, vests in 
'The Political People of the United States^ or ot the 
States united.* What do we mean by the political 
people of the United States ? We mean the qualified 
voters of the same. Wlien the Constitution ot the 
United States declares that " We, the people of the 
United States, do ordain," etc., it does not mean 
minors, women, idiots, or disfranchised persons, but 
it means evidently the voters, — those to whom the 
/r//.f/ of voting is confided, whether in the primary elec- 
tion or in the Convention of the people of the United 
States, which is th^ highest assemblage known to the 
American form of government; for it, and it alone, 
has the power to change fundamentally the organic law 
of the land, — changing it from a republic, as it is now 
constituted, into a pure democracy, a monarchy, an 
aristocracy, or into an imperialism. From this it is 
evident that the sovereign power vests in the political 
people, the voters of the States united, and this sov- 
ereignty finds expression when representatively assem- 

* "The political or sovereign people of the United States exists as united States, 
and only as united States. The Union and the States are coeval, horn together, 
and can exist only together. Separation is dissolution, — the deatli of both. The 
United States are a State, a single, sovereign State ; but this single, sovereign 
State consists in the union and solidarity of States instead of individuals." — 
Bronson. 



^4 

bled in the Convention for the whole people; and not 
in Congress, as Mr. Sumner and his co-laborers in 
naturalism would seem to think ; nor in the President, 
as Mr. Johnson has the audacity to think, and upon 
his thinking to act. No. The American State is too 
sacred a thing to be confounded with the British idea, 
or with that of our French Red Republicans and their 
satellites ; nor is it an imperialism, constituted by the 
plebescitum. It is something more divine than either of 
these. It is no monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy, 
but a Republic, — rcspiiblica. In its Constitution, both 
written and unwritten, it partakes largely of the con- 
stitution of THE Church. Beginning trom twelve 
States f thirteen ■^■), it holds in the evolution of its lite a 
strikino; analo(2;y to the beginnings of the Church trom 
the twelve Apostles (thirteen)- As we trace the growth 
of both, we see this parallel assuming striking and 
analoii;ous relations. The twelve principles ot the 
Church are embodied in both ; South Carolina bears a 
striking resemblance to Judas Iscariot. (Georgia takes 
the place of Matthias or of Paul in this relation. 
The analogies can be run out through the whole 
length and breadth tjf the nation's lite and of the 
historv of the Church. in fact, the American Re- 
public, as it is to be, will become the antetype of the 
new gh)rified bodv of the Church of the Future, when 
the union of Church and State will be sacred and holy, 
ht tor the Divine Love and Wisdom to dwell in, in 
righteousness, peace, and true freedom. 

From this conception of the American State you 
begin to see what a responsible trust the suffrage 

■•■■" Tlic original Union was t'ornu-J by twclvi- States instead of tliirtcL-n. Gi-oijjia 
came in aftcrwariis, an 1 made the thirteenth. 



25 

is. The current political doctrine of the day, that 
voting is a right, — a natural right^ similar to the 
rights of property, liberty, and the pursuit of hap- 
piness, — is unfounded and fallacious, and, if not 
arrested, will prove a snare and a delusion to the 
American people. Voting is not a right, but a 
trusty a privilege, conferred by political society on 
those supposed to be intelligent enough and worthy 
enough to exercise it. None but the wise and the 
good^ therefore, should vote ; for he who votes has 
the destinies of millions in his hands. Universal 
suffrage is a fallacious dream, born in the hot-bed 
of partisan politics. If we are not careful, it will 
yet prove the overthrow of American liberty. Unless 
Divine Providence interposes, the great American 
Republic, as at present constituted, on the basis 
of universal suffrage, is destined to an eclipse ; to 
come up hereafter through great tribulation, to its 
original sanity, as constituted by God through our 
fathers. The great American Idea will not perish, 
although we may prove false to its sacred require- 
ments. It is destined to rule the world, and to 
add materially to its regeneration. 

The great bar to the present reconstruction of the 
Union is a want of a proper appreciation. North 
and South, of the mission both sections are designed 
to subserve in the unfolding ot Divine Providence in 
the evolution of the American State ; and of a 
proper appreciation, in both sections, of the feelings 
and purposes of each in regard to the other. We 
are persuaded that if a proper feeling of charity was 
prevalent, and the good and true of both sections 
could come to an understanding of each other's wants 

4 



26 



and desires, with a looking to God for guidance 
and help in the present crisis of our affairs, it 
would not be long before true fraternity would be re- 
stored, and the rights, duties, and privileges belonging 
to both would speedily adjust themselves. The North 
thiilks the South wholly rebel, — wholly destitute of 
a proper feeling for the former slave, and a proper 
regard and respect for the Union. The Southern 
people hate, with a bitter hatred, those who thus 
taunt them with a want of good faith ; the South 
thinks that the North is a land of isms ; filled 
with fanatics ; subverters of the true Christian 
faith and of the ancient land-marks of the govern- 
ment of the fathers. I'hat the Northern people 
are mere mone\'-lovers, given to trick and chicane, 
— abundantly fit tor peripatetic venders ot old 
clothes, clocks, wooden nutmegs, and Yankee no- 
tions generally. Both sections have seen the other 
represented in the worst features belonging to each. 
Travel anel intercommunion can alone disabuse the 
mind of this fallacious judgment. There are un- 
doubtedly nien and women in both sections who 
deserve the contempt they receive, — men and women 
who disgrace the name of Christ, and who do not 
deserve the respect of man. But these are not the 
classes to whom we can look for permanent results. 
We know that there are those in the South who 
have a sincere regard tor the African race, who love 
the Union, now that the Lhiion is no longer a 
c|uestionable fact, in theory, if not in practice. 
They pine for the opj~)ortLinity to redeem the past; 
to show, bv a true Christian devotion, their love 
for the African, no less tlian the white man. It is 



27 

to this class that we look for practical results in 
the future. They have for the present retired from 
the surface of Southern life, and await the time 
when they can prove their faith by their works. 
They will have their opportunity ! The Southern 
people know or think they know that the present 
movement to reconstruct the Union has no solid 
foundation ; that it looks only to the acquisition of 
partisan power and the acquirement of material ad- 
vantage. In other words, that it is based upon 
selfishness, and not upon love to the late subjected 
race, nor of the Union, independent of the mere 
material advantages to be derived from both. Any 
reconstruction which has for its end the destruction 
of the Univritten Constitution^ if not the written, 
cannot bring permanent results. The Southern peo- 
ple think that the measures proposed will only 
breed dissension and final disgust with all. They 
know that the designations — North and South — 
have not only a geographical but a spiritual mean- 
ing ; that these terms embody principles in the 
very constitution of things. The North means 
progress, liberty, intellectual activity, small hirms, 
manufactures, trade, finance ; whilst the South means 
conservatism, order, heart culture, and with it re- 
ligion and the social refinements, large plantations, 
agriculture, and the productive interests generally ; 
requiring, for the successful evolution of the latter, 
stability of labor, organized capital, and the pro- 
found intellectual and heart culture, which these 
enable the more fortunate to attain. In other words, 
that the North and the South, when viewed sep- 
arately, are the antipodes of the other. That they 



28 



only work together when this seeming antagonism 
is harmonized in a higher unity, which comes alone 
by the true union of Christ's spirit. They know 
that it is perfectly idle for the North to think of 
colonizing the South with a " homogeneous civili- 
zation " ; that it is not desirable, if it couki be 
done. The South is the woman, the North the 
man; the South is the will, the North the under- 
standing. That neither can exist without the other, 
and that both are stronger and better when the 
proper relations of each are recognized ; and when 
reconstruction is based upon a recognition of this 
fact, it will be permanent, not before. The North will 
give the negro the suffrage, and exclude the better 
classes of the South tro!n it ; but we fear it will 
prove fallacious. The negro has no political past ; 
he has no political culture. He is a parasite ; he 
naturally clings, like the ivy to the oak, to the 
white race. If the white race goes down, he goes 
with it. His genius is aff^ectional, not intellectual or 
rational. He is easily led by the good or the evil, 
and if left to himself, without further culture, may 
sink back to his original barbarism. Certainly 
shrewdness, and chicane, and lying hypocrisy are 
not the best attainments for him. These he will 
certainly receive if left to the unguided influences of 
bad counsels. If the better class of Southern people 
could have the privilege of organizing this race into 
productive labor, on the large farms which they gen- 
erally own, it woLdd be a blessing to all. A system 
without the brutal and disQ-usting features of the old 



slave system, in the hands of those who are actu- 
ated by true and genuine humane and Christian 



29 

sympathy, would go far to settle this whole question 
of the relation of the races. A system Patriarchal 
in its form, and born of Christ, preserving intact 
the freedom and individuality of all, would be the 
best thing that could be devised for both races. 
Let the white race realize their true responsibility to 
the African race among us ; let them redeem the 
past by giving to this race the advantages of their 
own culture, and the protecting power and guidance 
of their superior executive wisdom ; and, under 
Christ, the South could be made to blossom like 
the rose. All this could be done without disturb- 
ing a single relation ; without even the juggling 
machinery of the State. The new system would, in 
time, create its own form of expression. In the 
mean time, until order can be restored, and the 
rights of all secured, let none but the military 
power be exercised, in conjunction with the pro- 
visional governments which have already been con- 
stituted. If this was announced as the future policy 
of the government, we believe that men and women 
would arise who would prove equal to the emer- 
gency, and who would soon solve the whole problem 
of Southern reconstruction. 

Disguise it as we may, there is in the South that 
which every true man and woman must recognize as 
high and noble. Inverted it may be; often disgust- 
ing and brutal in its manifestation, but underneath 
it all we discover that which, if properly directed, 
would result in a new chivalry, in a new aristocracy, 
both having for their life the spirit of Christ. The 
chivalry for righteousness and for true nobleness in 
women is true chivalry ; an aristocracy based upon 



worth and wisdom, and which protects and cares for 
the unfortunate classes, is true nobility, and may be 
moulded into a hierarchy which is the true aristocracy 
of heaven. Such may be born out of the South yet. 
The Southern people are sick and tired of strife ; are 
disgusted with politics and politicians, and well-nigh 
disgusted with the prevalent priesthoods in that 
section. They long for a Divine ideal yet to come; 
we mean the better class of Southerners. Think you 
the great God, who chastises those he would purify, 
will deny this longing? We believe not. Many of 
the Southern people are ripe for any change which has 
God for its advocate. And he will yet come to that 
sorrow-stricken people. 

But we must bring this Address to a close. We 
have started with the Divine Man as the incarnation 
of the whole working life of the Church and State ; 
for he it is who embodies in his own personality all 
that is divine in either. It is from him that the 
great forces now ojK'rant in human nature proceed, 
inau(>-urating, through his Divine Natural Humanity, 
the new Church, the new State, — science, art, litera- 
ture, the fine arts, — the all of lite which has solidity 
and strength and Divine exactitude, as well as the 
aesthetic embodiments of a Divine spontaneity. We 
have seen that the basis of his teachings is love to 
(jod and love to man, — himself being the exemplar 
of both; that his Spirit is seeking to bring all gov- 
ernments, all peoples, to the recognition of the great 
fact of human brotherhood and love ; that our own 
government, as it embodies these, will be permanent, 
and will reflect his image. We have shown, or 



31 

attempted to show, the providential evolution of the 
American State ; that it, in its formation, conserved 
the great centripetal and centrifugal torces of Union 
and State Rights, Nationality and Federation ; that 
these again, when properly adjusted, will be united 
in indissoluble bonds, making permanent and sacred 
the Great American Commonwealth. We have shown, 
or attempted to show, what suffrage is, and what it 
must be, to become a holy privilege to be exercised 
bv the wise and good alone, as a trust. We have 
hinted at what ought to be done to make Recon- 
struction permanent and lasting. It now onlv re- 
mains for us, in making this general survey, to 
forecast briefly the future glory that awaits us as a 
people if true to the great mission intrusted to us 
by Providence. 

Ours is a great destiny. I'he Lord of Heaven and 
Earth is forming our nation into a model republic, 
that we may be the dispensers of his glory to the 
nations. Here, on this Western Continent, is rising 
the temple which is to shelter all people. Here the 
Divine nature is to be incarnated in law, order, and 
liberty. Here is to be revealed the unity of Heaven in 
the bonds of Love. Here Peace, with her dove-like 
wings, is to find her continual abiding-place ; and 
here Plenty is to pour from her horn of abundance 
the riches of untold wealth. When the Old World 
is torn to fragments by intestine war and hatred ; 
when the old civilization is burned or rolled away as 
a scroll, from these peaceful shores will go forth the 
influences which are to rebuild on her ruins the New 
Heavens and the New Earth ; which are to establish 



32 

there as here a new Christian Republic which will en- 
fold all nations as one family, whose Father is God ; 
whose king is Christ the Lord, and whose fellow- 
ship will be the redeemed of all kindreds and tongues 
in Heaven. 



University Press, Cambridge : Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 



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